What comes to mind when you think about standing alone? Do you think about loneliness, being stranded or deserted, being lost or unable to find help, being misunderstood or pushed away from everyone else? For some strange reason, the majority of people in the world will identify the negative side of a predicament before the positive.  While I do not believe it’s wrong to think of the negatives in order to properly assess what an individual is dealing with at any given time, I do believe that if you allow the negative side of what’s going on to overshadow the positive side, you will never reach your full potential in life.

Let’s look at a few other things that standing alone can represent. It can show that you’re leading, that you’re exceptionally different from everyone else, that you’re the one that is stepping into new territories in life or that your greatness is too much for others to deal with. I could go on and on with different great qualities that standing alone implies but I want for you to think of some of the great characteristics about yourself that either force you to be alone or needs for you to be alone in order for it to fully come out of you.

First let’s look at the two positive reasons people find themselves alone.

1: Your talent forces you to be alone.

I love almost all of the major comic book characters. I love that they all have some sort of super power. The one that made the biggest impression on me when I was young was Superman. As a child and even as an adult (Don’t judge me) I had/have a desire to just take off and fly. I don’t think there’s anything cooler than to just fly. But one thing we have to notice about Superman is that no one else flies with him. His talent forces him to do what he does alone.

Whatever your talents and gifts are they are different from everyone else’s. When you begin to discover them and operate in them you will be forced into solitude, not because anything is wrong with you but because everything is right with you. You are being elevated and elevation is not a group activity. If you and everyone you know are standing on a flat surface and you literally start elevating, the more you’re elevated the more distance will be between you and them. This distance and separation is taking you to a place where you’re alone, solely because you have a gift that they don’t.

So if you find yourself alone don’t think that you have some sort of issue and by no means should you ever decide to hold back your giftedness just so you can stay with the crowd. Your talent could be separating you from others because they can’t do what you can. Embrace the fact that your abilities set you a part.

2: Your talent needs for you to be alone to grow.

Whenever I see videos of LeBron, Kobe or any athlete training in the off season I never see them training with the whole team. In fact, most of the times I see them in the gym I see them alone. Reason being, in order for them to be the best that they can be, they have to take time to solely work on themselves. Even though they are a part of teams, it’s necessary that they spend time working alone so that they can reunite with the team as better individuals that will make the team better.

There is a purpose in you being alone. There are things in you that need to be worked on that cannot be properly trained while you’re around a crowd of people.  It’s not that you will never be a part of the crowd again but that you need this time alone to be a better person for the ones that you love. Take this time to identify your strengths and make them stronger and to identify your weaknesses and learn how to offset them. Get in tune with the reason God created you, that way when you’re reunited with your “team”, you will be  whole and not a fraction of yourself.

Don’t despise this time and don’t try to rush this time. Use it to grow in every area of your life. Crowds are the greatest distractions from growth; it is in solitude where you can get all you need without anything getting in the way. You weren’t separated to shrink into depression and confusion; you were placed alone to grow.

Now we’ve dealt with the reasons people are alone, let’s look at 4 things being alone implies.

The first thing it implies is that you are a leader. It is impossible for a leader to be just another person in the crowd. The leader has to be out front in order for those that follow them to see where they’re going. This puts that individual in a place where they always have to be a few steps ahead and away from everyone else.

We live in a world where most people are followers that need someone to lead them. In the 50s African Americans were being treated extremely unfairly; they needed Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King to step away from the masses to lead them. If you find yourself alone, a few steps away and ahead of everyone else, that implies that you are supposed to lead those that you are in front of. Somehow life as we know it has become extremely perverted to the point that those that stand out feel like they’re being looked down upon and not being looked towards. Truth of the matter is that even those that appear to look down on you secretly look up to you.

Trust me, everyone that is grouped together is looking towards you to see how to be different. They might not express it, you might not be popular in the beginning and you might even be ridiculed for some time but in the end, if you embrace your position alone you will begin to draw the very people that you thought looked down on you.

The second thing being alone implies is that you’re exceptionally different. No matter what the sport is, the best players are looking to hoist up the MVP trophy.  Whoever wins this award is singled out for their exceptional talent and placed in a category of 1 that shows they were the best player that season. They have no problem standing at the podium alone because they know they’re standing there because they’re exceptional.

In the same manner, we have to understand that us standing alone doesn’t show that we are less than or not good enough; it shows that we are exceptional. There is something so great and unique that you bring to the world that you can’t stand among everyone else; your abilities set you apart. What you thought was weird was exceptional. What you thought no one understood was exceptional. What you aspired to do didn’t catch on immediately because it was exceptional. People that have not tapped into their exceptionalism (I made that word up) don’t have the capacity to immediately recognize yours. It’s up to you to know what you are and be comfortable in it.

Best Buy has done a great job with branding the Geek Squad. The people that some might say are weird, corny and geeky are now being sought out by the people that viewed them that way because of their exceptional talent with computers. Don’t try to fit back in the crowd. Don’t become uncomfortable because you’re not like everyone else; love who you are and be proud that what makes you different is what makes you exceptional

The third thing that standing alone implies is that you are stepping into new territory. In Ancient days, how great a king was, was defined by how much land they conquered. Whatever size the land was when they took over, they had to add new territory to be greater than their predecessor. This only happens by going into new lands. It wasn’t enough for them to build on the land that they inherited; they had to add more.

This principle is still the same today. Innovation is what shows that someone is great, but innovation only happens when someone no longer wants to be or do something the same. The contentment people have for their lives will cause them to despise the innovative spirit within you. Everything about you, how you think and how you act is so new that others aren’t ready to receive it yet. You’re in a totally new territory in life than those that you are normally around. You’re alone because the area of life that you are in is in a different zip code, a different time zone and different country.

Everyone around you is still traveling to get where you are, so until they get there you will be alone. Conquer your new territory; build in your new territory so by the time anyone else gets to where you are, you will have your own position established. Don’t go back to meet anyone half way and don’t forfeit the new territory that you now own because you’re alone. Eventually the people will come but if you abandon your new territory you’ll arrive there with everyone else but someone else will be the king there instead of you.

The last thing we’ll deal with that standing alone implies is that your greatness is too much for others to handle. In the Bible there’s a story about a man named Joseph. God gives him this great vision that he shares with his brothers. His brothers despised the greatness of his vision and conspired to kill him. They ended up selling him into slavery all because they could not handle the greatness of his vision.

So many of the people we know are like Joseph’s brothers. When we begin to tell them our ideas, they’re ok with them but as soon as we start living them out they have unwarranted attitudes and distance themselves from us. Of course this is not something that we want to deal with but we have to know that some people can’t handle our greatness. Some people can’t stand to see us at the pinnacle of our lives when they’re still in the valley of theirs. We are a constant reminder to them that they should be further along in life, so since they’re not ready to put in the work to go higher, the easiest thing for them to do is to get away from us.

You cannot allow the people that can’t handle your greatness to cause you to dim it.  Continue to be great. Continue to shine. The Sun sits alone light-years away from the planet Earth, yet we depend on it shining. Even the people that have distanced themselves from you are depending on you to shine. So keep the light of your greatness on because the people in the dark need to see a way out.

As I stated earlier, I could go on for days with positive things that being alone implies. For sake of time I just wanted to point out these four things that it implies and give you the two reasons we find ourselves alone. The point of it all is never get tired of standing alone and go back to the crowd because the crowd produces mediocrity; standing alone produces greatness.